Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Ethoslife
United States
Remote

Who this role is best for

Geared toward candidates with a strong ML engineering background and experience in insurtech or fintech, comfortable with building scalable infrastructure for real-time models and marketing systems.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with 7+ years of ML engineering experience and a background in insurtech or fintech
    — “7+ years in machine learning engineering, MLOps, or software engineering with a strong ML focus”
  • Individuals who can bridge data science and engineering with a pragmatic approach to infrastructure
    — “Bridges data science and engineering, fluent in both worlds and trusted by both teams”
  • Candidates experienced in deploying real-time ML models for consumer-facing products
    — “Experience deploying and serving real-time production ML models integrated with consumer-facing products”

Things to consider

  • The role requires a high level of technical ownership and proactive problem-solving
    — “Bias toward ownership; you see a gap in the infrastructure and close it”
  • Candidates must be capable of debugging ML models independently, without a data scientist present
    — “enough to debug a model without a data scientist in the room”

How to stand out

  • Highlight your experience with feature stores and real-time inference pipelines in your resume
    — “Build and maintain feature pipelines that feed real-time inference for consumer-facing product surfaces”
  • Demonstrate your ability to automate feedback loops with ad platforms in interviews
    — “Automate feedback loops to ad platforms”
  • Showcase your background in regulated industries like insurtech or fintech
    — “Experience in insurtech, fintech, or other regulated industries”
  • Emphasize your track record in CI/CD pipeline development for ML models
    — “Develop CI/CD pipelines and retraining infrastructure”
  • Demonstrate your ability to mentor and raise the bar for ML engineering teams
    — “Raises the team's ML engineering bar through code review, documentation, and mentorship”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • deployed and operationalized marketing models
  • built reliable data pipelines
  • developed CI/CD pipelines
  • implemented automated monitoring and alerting
Typical background
7+ years in machine learning engineeringMLOpssoftware engineering

Skills & requirements

Required

Machine Learning EngineeringMlopsPythonAWS SagemakerFeature PipelinesFeature StoresWorkflow OrchestrationDockerContainer OrchestrationCloud InfrastructureCommunication SkillsModel MonitoringCi/cd PipelinesRetraining InfrastructureMarketing MeasurementAttributionMedia Mix ModelingAd Platform IntegrationsdbtData Warehouse Tooling

Preferred

InsurtechFintechRegulated IndustriesTechnical-excellenceLeadership

Stack & domain

PythonAWS SagemakerSQLDockerAirflowdbtInsurtechFintechCommunicationCollaborationOwnershipLeadershipFinanceHealthcare

About the role

Original posting from Ethoslife via Greenhouse

About Ethos

Ethos (Nasdaq: $LIFE) is a leading life insurance technology company on a mission to protect families by democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale. With its robust three-sided technology platform, Ethos is transforming the life insurance experience for consumers, agents, and carriers alike. Ethos offers instant, accessible products and a seamless online process that requires no medical exams and just a few health questions; it eliminates traditional barriers, making it easier than ever for everyone to protect their families. Ethos is redefining how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten.

About the role

We're looking for a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to own the infrastructure that gets our models from development into product and marketing workflows. You'll partner with data scientists and product engineers to build deployment pipelines, feature stores, monitoring systems, and retraining infrastructure across both product and marketing use cases. The right candidate is a data scientist that can also build scalable data architecture: you care about how a model will run at scale, not just how it performs on AUC.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Product ML Engineering

Own the deployment and production lifecycle of models powering product experiences: coverage recommenders, user-to-channel routing, and agent assignment logic

Build and maintain feature pipelines that feed real-time inference for consumer-facing product surfaces

Implement automated monitoring and alerting for data drift, feature quality issues, and model degradation

Develop CI/CD pipelines and retraining infrastructure that let data scientists ship iterative improvements without engineering bottlenecks

Marketing ML Engineering

Deploy and operationalize marketing models: attribution, incrementality, and media mix and automate feedback loops to ad platforms

Build reliable data pipelines that deliver clean, timely inputs to marketing models and measurement workflows

Own model health monitoring and dependency management across the marketing model inventory

Qualifications and Skills:

7+ years in machine learning engineering, MLOps, or software engineering with a strong ML focus

Experience deploying and serving real-time production ML models integrated with consumer-facing products (AWS SageMaker or equivalent)

Strong Python engineering skills: software design, testing, CI/CD, package development, and SQL

Experience building and maintaining feature pipelines, feature stores, and workflow orchestration (e.g., Airflow)

Familiarity with Docker, container orchestration, and cloud infrastructure

Strong communication skills; able to collaborate fluidly with data scientists, product engineers, and non-technical stakeholders

Bias toward ownership; you see a gap in the infrastructure and close it

Working knowledge of ML methods: supervised learning, Bayesian models, causal inference, enough to debug a model without a data scientist in the room

Marketing measurement: attribution, media mix modeling, or ad platform integrations

dbt or data warehouse tooling

Experience in insurtech, fintech, or other regulated industries

Gets in the weeds without losing the bigger picture

Knows the tradeoffs between over-engineered infrastructure and pragmatic solutions, and picks the right one

Bridges data science and engineering, fluent in both worlds and trusted by both teams

Raises the team's ML engineering bar through code review, documentation, and mentorship

#LI-Remote  #LI-TL1

The US national base salary range for this full-time position is $156,000 -$275,000. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. 

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only and do not include applicable bonus, equity, or benefits. 

You can find further details of our US benefits at https://www.ethoslife.com/careers/

Don’t meet every single requirement? If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. At Ethos we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace.

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Pursuant to the SF Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider employment for qualified applicants with arrests and conviction records.

To learn more about what information we collect and how it may be used, please refer to our California Candidate Privacy Notice.

Recruitment Notice: Please be aware of recruitment scams. All legitimate communication from our team will only come from email addresses ending in @ethos.com or @getethos.com.

We will never ask for payment, banking details, or sensitive personal information during the hiring process. If you are contacted by someone claiming to represent us from a different email address, please treat it as fraudulent.

Source: Ethoslife careers (Greenhouse)

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